The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) defined a technical specification, commonly referred to as i3 which provides for the evolution of the North American 9-1-1 system called “Next Generation 9-1-1” (NG9-1-1). The NG9-1-1 system is an all-IP-based emergency communications system which will include new functionality such as employing short message service (SMS) text message as a method of public safety incident origination. More recently, the Joint Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) released a standard for employing short message services (SMS) in a NG9-1-1. See. “Native SMS TO 9-1-1 Requirements and Architecture Specification” approved March 2013 (hereinafter “J-STD-110”).
SMS has been criticized and labeled an inferior technology for public safety incident origination, primarily due to its fundamental inability to support identification of callers' location information. Other limitations of SMS are the inability to transfer, conference or park an SMS message.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and computer implemented operation which would provide context-aware linkage between NG9-1-1 SMS and a public safety incident.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments described herein.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.